Some things never seem to change in New Jersey.
Garden State residents continue to complain about high property taxes, our sky-high cost of living and getting ripped off by E-ZPass.
As New Jersey drivers continue to protest the way the electronic toll collection system operates, and the fines that are handed out to motorists, attorney Matthew Faranda-Diedrich, a partner at Royer Cooper Cohen Braunfeld, said final oral arguments and a verdict in the class action lawsuit case filed against the Turnpike Authority could come early in 2023.
The lawsuit against E-ZPass fines
He said the main point of the suit being considered by a three-judge Appellate Court panel is simple.
“The actual cost of processing and collecting the toll violation is a small fraction of the $50 that’s currently being collected,” he said.
Faranda-Diedrich said you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to calculate that the current fine handed out is inflated.
“We believe that the actual cost to the Turnpike to collect the toll violation is just a dollar or two and not the $50 that was claimed.”
He said the lawsuit seeks recovery “of all of the sums that have been collected by the Turnpike at the $50 charge level, to be returned to the motorists who paid those charges.”
The Turnpike Authority, however, has insisted that the cost of a toll needs to take into account the cost of the infrastructure needed to identify violators and then collect the unpaid tolls. The lawsuit has disputed those…
